Sara Potler LaHayne Headshot
Report a problem with this profile
[email protected]

Sara Potler LaHayne  

Founder & CEO,Move This World

Sara Potler LaHayne, a life-long dancer and previous professional performer, was a Fulbright Scholar in Bogotá, Colombia when she wrote, implemented, and evaluated an innovative peace education, conflict transformation program. In Bogotá, she learned to fuse her passions for international development, peacebuilding, education and dance while authoring and leading the original Move This World curriculum with third graders in Colombian public elementary schools. Today Move This World uses creative movement to address and transform conflict, violence and bullying with over 9,000 individuals across 22 cities and four continents.

Prior to her role as Founder and CEO of Move This World, Sara was the Chief Operating Officer for Atlas Corps, an international exchange for nonprofit leaders around the world. Sara built and maintained partnerships with organizations such as the UN Foundation, Ashoka, Grameen Foundation and Peace Corps. She strategized and successfully executed the winning of $400,000 through microgiving online fundraising campaigns such as America's Giving Challenge, Chase Community Giving via Facebook, and Pepsi Refresh Everything. While at Atlas Corps, she played a lead role in increasing more than seven-fold the size of the program, taking the organizational budget from $300,000 to $1.3 million, expanding to new markets within the U.S. from one program site to five, and expanding the staff from she and the Founder to nine full-time employees.

A graduate of the University of Virginia, Sara is a Global Shaper with the World Economic Forum; an American Express Emerging Innovator; a Cordes Fellow with the Opportunity Collaboration; a Peace X Peace 2012 Women, Power, & Peace Award Winner (Generation Peace Award); the only U.S. recipient of the Youth Leader Award by the Inter-American Development Bank Annual Board of Governors Meeting; an Ashoka Activating Empathy Award Winner; a two-time Beyond Sport Award Finalist; a StartingBloc Fellow; a Finalist Nominee Social Entrepreneur/Innovator for the Women's Information Network 18th Annual Young Women of Achievement Award; 1 of 3 Artists Transforming the World by the Arts and Healing Network; a Susan Schiffer Stautberg Leadership Fellow; a Global Semi-Finalist with the International Youth Foundation YouthActionNet; and a Semi-Finalist in the Global Social Venture Competition. She has been featured in Forbes, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Carnegie Council's Policy Innovations, Americans for the Arts, Ashoka, El Tiempo, Unrest Magazine, Rising Pyramid, Whole Living Magazine, Martha Stewart Radio on SiriusXM, and the International Platform on Sport and Peace, among others.

Related Speakers View all


More like Sara